Mad Men: Dream Come True TV is really a mixed bag of essays. I found some to be a bit convoluted and direction-less while others were most informative. The last two sections of the book, which cover race, gender, and politics, will be of interest, I would imagine, to most visitors to this site. Fans of the series will no doubt flock to the first two essays that offer the most behind-the-scenes perspectives on the show. If anything, the essays collected here remind us why good television matters and why we should care about and watch it so closely. Whether at an ad agency in 1960s New York or on an intergalactic battleship, the drama of good television is, more often than not, more about us than it is the objects on the screen. As Edgerton points out in his introduction to the book, “[The characters in Mad Men] are merely an earlier, confused and conflicted version of us, trying to make the best of a future that is unfolding before them at breakneck speed” (xxvii). The brilliance of Mad Men, according to many of these contributors, is that it simultaneously portrays and critiques a seemingly distant time while showing us that we have much farther to go to get to where we already think we are. A brief summary of the book follows.

In a Foreword, Introduction, and fifteen essays, the contributors to this collection cover the series from a wide array of perspectives, all bunched into five larger themes. In the first, “Industry and Authorship,” Edgerton discusses the production history of Mad Men…how the series came to be. Brian Rose interviews executive producer Scott Hornbacher on both the birth of the series and the day-to-day, or episode-to-episode, work on it. Finally, Ron Simon puts, or reflects on, Don Draper in conversation with Bob Dylan and George Lois.

The second section addresses visual and aural style and their influences on the series. Jeremy G. Butler discusses the series’ style and the ways in which it compares to other popular ’60s fare like The Apartment or Ben-Hur. Tim Anderson analyzes the ways in which music and sound critique the idealism of the series and the time in which it is set. Finally, Maurice Yacowar, in brilliant fashion, extends this study to consider how moments of silence in particular episodes continues this critique. Yacowar observes, “If our awareness makes us feel superior to the characters we fall into Weiner’s trap. For it is his advertising men’s sense of superiority [...] that renders them hollow. These suggestive silences draw on our privileged knowledge and pull us into Weiner’s satire” (86).

The third section, “Narrative Dynamics and Genealogy,” places the series in historical context in relation to its structure and development. Horace Newcomb considers the role that television plays within the series and, by extension, in our own lives. Sean O’Sullivan points to the serial nature of the series and its relation to other serialized narratives and even The Odyssey. O’Sullivan realizes that, much like Yacowar’s discussion of silence, the moments of nothingness in between each season and the time that elapses in the narrative have implications for how we view the events that take place in each episode.  David Lavery discusses the poetic nature of the series and Frank O’Hara‘s influence on the ’60s, the series, and series creator Matthew Weiner.

In the fourth section, contributors mine the rich sexual politics and gender themes in Mad Men. In this section, contributors offer insightful essays that shed light on the brilliance of the series but that also reveal conflicting interpretations of the series. Mimi White analyzes the series’ “Mad Women” and argues that they are so for completely different, and sometimes self-imposed, reasons. Mary Beth Haralovich discusses the ways in which Mad Men‘s women characters open up conversations about feminism and how they can bridge the three different waves of it. Finally, Kim Akass and Janet McCabe point to the opportunities for and limitations on “the working girl” in Mad Men, the ’60s, and our world today.

Finally, three contributors focus on “Cultural Memory and the American Dream.” William Siska shows how the “boyish” nature of the men in Mad Men is a critique of American capitalism and consumerism as well as an embodiment of the tension between “gemeinschaft” and “gesellschaft.” Allison Perlman extends her analysis beyond the series, placing it in conversation with “paratexts” like DVD featurettes and accompanying documentaries about race and gender in American history to look at the ways in which the series offers a revisionist history of racism in America while simultaneously undermining that history. David Marc considers the series to be a “Roots Tale of the Information Age” and analyzes it in the context of broadcast advertising, the birth of the radio, and McLuhan‘s observations on advertising.

For the uninitiated, Terra Nova is about a project in which humans in 2149 have decimated the earth. Global warming, famine, wars, and drought are the order of the day. To combat these global ills, the beleaguered humans flee, not to a remote island oasis, but to the past…waaaay in the past. Every so often, a new group of colonists arrive at the prehistoric colony, Terra Nova, through a time warp. The colony is a mix of green living and modern technology enclosed in a giant fence that protects the group from hungry dinosaurs. The members of Terra Nova negotiate life among these giant lizards but also a rogue group called the Sixers who appear to see through the idealism of Terra Nova and hint at something more nefarious at work with the attempt to reboot society.

These less threatening dinosaurs take advantage of Terra Nova's vegetation.

In many ways, the series plays out like a post-apocalyptic disaster movie, even though the events take place before said apocalyptic disaster. As I mentioned earlier, in only a handful of episodes the series has addressed a wide array of issues and topics. Of course, environmentalism is at its core, as is green tech–from the seemingly sustainable construction materials to the hybrid sounding vehicles to laser weapons. The series also explores so much of the post-apocalyptic genre’s foundational concern: how we as humans (re)act to and move on when given the opportunity to hit the reset button. Like most post-apocalyptic narratives, Terra Nova reveals that humans bring all their pre-apocalyptic woes with them. The tension between the Terra Nova colonists and the racially encoded Sixers is telling. But life within Terra Nova itself is starting to reveal some chinks in the armor…which brings us to the aforementioned episode, “Bylaw.”

In this episode, the lead character, officer Jim Shannon (Jason O’Mara), investigates the death/murder of a soldier, Foster (Sweeney Young). He eventually learns that one of his fellow soldiers killed him to get out of a sizable debt that he owed him. The episode raises all sorts of questions about the appropriateness of the death (banishment) penalty and what justice would look like in such a small, close-knit community. Yet what caught my attention was the presence of a stole-clad priest (?) at the soldier’s funeral procession.

Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang) leads a member of the clergy and a group of mourners in Foster's funeral procession.

Far more interesting than Jurassic era denominationalism (what type of clergy is he?) is the notion that these inhabitants still cling to a notion of the Divine even though their presence in Terra Nova disrupts all traditional understandings of time. Reflecting on the series from a religious perspective, we know that many people believe that God reigns not only over all of creation but over time as well. God, in all God’s omniscience and omnipotence, will bring about the end of this world through a series of violent global events which will culminate in the triumph over evil and the arrival of a new heaven and a new earth. Millenial dispensationalists believe that we can see signs that point to this chronological development.

Other Christians, especially process theologians, question this theology and view of the world. Some claim take an alternate view of God’s omniscience and omnipotence. For many, God exists as future and possibility, luring us towards the Kingdom of God rather than pushing us. We are free to react as we will and, boldly put, these reactions influence the way God moves in the world. Christians who critique Rapture/Apocalypse theologies argue that a new heaven and a new earth will not magically pop out of thin air to replace the world we now know. This Biblical language describes the Kingdom of God in metaphorical terms and should inspire us to work for the creation of a new earth where we already abide, work that is extremely difficult given the ways in which we have negatively impacted our world from, simply put, pollution to injustice and inequality. The work of creating a new earth is far easier for the inhabitants of Terra Nova who benefit from time travel. But it is this sci-fi time travel that should inspire us to think more creatively about our future, the Kingdom of God, and our places in it.

A chronological teleological worldview is, on many levels, easy to swallow. However, this kind of circular experience that time travel allows in Terra Nova is a bit more interesting. Thinking science-fictionally, is God sovereign over time travel? Does God greet each arriving party to Terra Nova? How do we think and talk about God’s work in the world with respect to alternate views of the human experience of time? While many Christians are waiting for God to act violently in this world to bring about a new creation, perhaps God is waiting on humans to act peacefully to pave the way for Her return…giving us multiple opportunities to get it right in the process.

In many ways, the time travel lottery in Terra Nova raises more questions than it answers. For example, who gets to go and who gets to decide who gets to go? At the same time, however, it should encourage us to think about the ways in which we can push the re-set button on our current means of existence. It should force us to question how long our patterns of over-production and over-consumption can exist and what tragedies might await us if we do not exercise more sensible dominion over the gifts with which we have been entrusted. So does God greet the time travelers at Terra Nova? Perhaps. On the other hand, I believe it is safe to say that God definitely greets and embodies our every effort to create new, just communities here on earth, even as we face down our own dinosaurs of evil and injustice.

I typically roll my eyes when famous athletes point to the clouds after scoring the winning point, or when singers or actors thank “first and foremost God” after receiving a Grammy or Oscar. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it almost always seems to rub me the wrong way. Perhaps I feel that it indicates a shallow theology that seeks to display faith rather than living it humbly and quietly. Perhaps I’m a “reverse snob” and it bothers me when famous people who make millions of dollars speak glibly of a faith whose central message is oneness with the poor, denying thyself, etc, etc. Perhaps, as a liberal religious scholar and ordained minister, I’m actually quite cynical. Perhaps.

So, when I don’t balk, roll my eyes, or become annoyed with someone on my television screen who points toward the clouds or speaks of God in response to a win or loss, I know I need to pause and pay attention. Surprisingly, such was the case last Thursday evening when the krump crew, Street Kingdom, was voted off MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew. This may come as a surprise for folks unfamiliar with the development of krumping or the history of dance in Christianity. But for me, hearing the reaction of Ceasare “Tight Eyez” Willis, the developer of krump and Street Kingdom’s crew leader, was an affirmation of krump’s origins, as well as a poignant affirmation of faith in Christ.

Street Kingdom dance crew.

Krumping is sometimes represented as K.R.U.M.P., which is a “backronym” for Kingdom Radically Uplifted Mighty Praise.  As William Booth’s 2005 article, “The Exuberant Warrior Kings of ‘Krumping’,” illustrated in the Washington Post, krumping is understood by many as a faith-based art-form. David LaChapelle’s documentary, Rize (2005), offers the development of krumping in South Central Los Angeles, and includes an entire section called “Krumping for Christ.”

Krump developed out of the clowning movement of Tommy the Clown; Thomas “Tommy the Clown,” Johnson is a reformed crack dealer who began clowning for cash at birthday parties after his release from jail in 1992. Krump is characterized as aggressive, hard, fast, improvisational, high-energy, and contains four primary moves: jabs, arm swings, chest pops, and stomps. Like Rize demonstrates, much of the movement resembles forms of African tribal dance or Santeria and voodoo religious ritual dances from Cuba and Haiti. The twelve krumpers in Rize, however, were shocked to see such a comparison because they had never been exposed to these dances. Until the 2005 release of Rize and subsequent attention from music videos and television shows like So You Think You Can Dance and ABDC, krumping was not performative. Rather than dancing on a stage, krumpers dance in “battles” where dancers face off in mock combat. Krumping was and is an escape from poverty, violence, gangs, and drugs.

But when a fellow krumper was killed in an act of gang violence, Tight Eyez and Miss Prissy (now a professional dancer) softened their movements and danced in their church beneath a painting of a black Jesus: krumping for Christ. Tight Eyez and many other members of Street Kingdom describe krumping as not only an escape from the poverty and violence of South Central, but also as an escape from much of commercial hip hop. Though hip hop—both in music and dance—started prophetically and with an emphasis on justice, much of commercial hip hop places tremendous emphasis on “bling,” money, sex, degrading women, and booty dancing. For these reasons, krumpers from Street Kingdom recoiled at the idea of dancing to a Nicki Minaj song on ABDC because, according to Tight Eyez, her lyrics are vulgar and Street Kingdom seeks to “krump the Godly way.” Like many krumpers, Tight Eyez was a victim of violence and has a bullet hole through his elbow; he states that “Krump led us to Jesus and got us saved.” Similarly, much of his rhetoric sounds like an evangelical conservative.

If I’m honest, this type of rhetoric— like pointing to the clouds after scoring a touchdown— typically bothers me a bit, as well. However, hearing such rhetoric is somehow different coming from Tight Eyez than from a person of wealth or privilege. Upon being voted off ABDC, Street Kingdom spoke of “walking by faith and not by sight” and of keeping Christ in their krump. Walking by faith and “being saved” takes on a deeper meaning when the person speaking about it has been shot and has created an intense and revolutionary dance form as a way of escaping poverty, violence, drugs, and gangs. It’s not metaphorical or theoretical when Tight Eyez and other krumpers speak of salvation; it’s an actual reality. In this way, their dance is their salvation. Krumping literally saves their lives. Salvation is actualized through this prophetic, urban dance form called krump.

Street Kingdom's Tight Eyez.

And krump is different than the many “Christian” rappers and hip hop artists who appropriated these art forms, “baptizing” the music and dance in order to evangelize youth. It is different because rap and hip hop didn’t start as a Christian movement. Krump did. In many ways, it is an embodiment of a liberation theology of sorts, liberating the body and soul from oppression and violence.

If you were to read the pages of almost any book about the history of dance in Christianity—academic or popular—you would be hard-pressed to find much mention of dance outside of Europe or America. There are brief examples, but the majority of references and writings stem from the histories already highlighted in most seminary classrooms: Martin Luther, Calvin, popes, and the early church fathers. Yes, Luther, Calvin, and many popes lauded dance as a valid form of worship! So did Augustine, Jerome, St. Basil, Ambrose, St. Gregory, and the list could continue.

What we don’t read much about in these books are dances of Christians on the so-called historical margins: women, minorities, the poor, and disenfranchised. This continues throughout history books as they recount the development of dance in worship in the United States today. Those who follow such trends hear about the revival of liturgical dance in the Catholic church after Vatican II. This spills into Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches. In the academy we sometimes hear of the dances in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, but they are not studied with the same academic rigor as the “high church” traditions because they are often viewed as too ecstatic, too uneducated, too “other.” The same is true for much of “praise dance” in many African American churches. While I have traced links from dances in Africa to the “ring shout” amidst hush harbors during slavery, into the use of “praise dance” in many contemporary African American churches, most scholars neglect or ignore such connections. And such is case when it comes to krumping, yet another dance on the margins of the church and society.

So, it’s no surprise to me that when these krumpers pause from their aggressive, pounding, stomping, high-energy dance form and, with tears streaming down their faces, point toward the skies and speak of salvation, I am not annoyed or rolling my eyes. Instead, I am moved. Because krumping is theological. It is salvific. It is worshipful. And it changes lives.

I offer this review as part of my “Graduate Student Comes Late to what’s on Cable” series. Seasons two and three of Being Human are now available on DVD and iTunes, with series four having been greenlit for next winter. (Maybe by then I’ll have BBC America, but I doubt it.) I couldn’t care less that the show has been adapted for Syfy here in America. Like MTV’s attempt at Skins, there are certain concepts that don’t translate well culturally just because the source material is in English. There’s a Britishness to the idea of revealing what goes on behind closed doors—and beneath the “skins”—of a more private and reserved culture that makes these shows tick. In America everyone already conducts their lives as though they’re on reality TV, leaving nothing to the fervid imaginations of writers and viewers.

In Being Human’s second season, the wacky roommate set-up is mostly strained beyond credibility, as the supernatural narratives outstrip what can be contained in a small apartment in Bristol. George Sands’ (Russell Tovey) “infection” of his girlfriend Nina (Sinead Keenan) with the werewolf bug leads to a standard (and dull) dumped-by-girlfriend plot. Annie (Lenora Crichlow), the ghost who haunts the series, continues to struggle with not taking the Door to the Other Side, but when these doors keep popping up in the closed confines of the house, it begins to look like she’s resisting being sucked into various closets.

Mitchell (Aidan Turner), the dark-eyed Irish vampire who struggles with his blood addiction, continues to be the best character. Having destroyed the evil head vampire, Herrick, in the first series, the vampire world of Bristol is in disarray. All the careful arrangements the vampires have made to get their fix without setting off alarm bells with the local authorities begin to break down. Mitchell comes up with an ingenious and loopy solution: a twelve-step program. And for a while it works, keeping the bloodthirsty undead at bay with coffee, cigarettes, personal confession and group affirmation.

When he’s not saving the world, Mitchell checks in with his housemates, offering advice to the dumped George (“Move on, mate”) or interacting with whatever it is Annie does. There’s a rebound plot with George and a single mom, which is almost worth enduring just to get to a frightening scene where George begins his monthly conversion in the midst of a primary school parent night.

The family that scares together...

Religion finally rears its head in this series, and in the conception of the post-Christian writers, its far more monstrous than any of the roommates. We know Lucy (Lyndsey Marshal) the scientist has gone off the righteous path because she’s written a positive research paper on Intelligent Design. She’s drawn in by an undertaker-like Anglican priest, Kemp (Donald Sumpter), who wants to use her knowledge as a researcher to destroy the vampires and “cure” the werewolves. Despite a scene showing a vampire attack that killed his family, Kemp’s only real motivation is “religion” in the worst sense—his character is a bloodless stereotype of the soul-shriveled moral crusader.

Lucy is far more fascinating, and she could have benefitted from a more compelling story arc had the producers had a bit more commitment. She’s a Christian and a scientist whose interest in monsters comes from a desire to discover a genetic cause for evil. There’s something formidable about her as a character, and when she and Mitchell fall for each other, I found myself wishing for an extended romance between Christian and vampire. It was not to be, however, as she quickly descends into the character of mad scientist, poisoned further with religious zeal. After the obligatory prayer scene kneeling at an altar, she collaborates with Kemp on blowing up one of Mitchell’s twelve-step sessions. On this show, monsters get to be three-dimensional characters, but Christians don’t.

Once Mitchell realizes he’s been duped by the woman he loves, he falls off the wagon—way off the wagon. The mass slaughter of 20 people on a commuter train that Mitchell undertakes in revenge becomes a national tragedy, with the intense police and media scrutiny that follows. Although Mitchell doesn’t admit to his friends what he’s done, he persuades George, Nina, and Annie to flee Bristol for Wales.

The third season has the four of them renting a closed-down B&B in a shabby seaside town in Wales. The house is now truly haunted by Mitchell’s act of abject evil. Whatever limitations the domestic space presented before are transformed, as the housemates begin hiding their secrets not just from the world, but from each other.

This inner secrecy is amplified as each episode brings a strange new temporary visitor that the roommates must contend with. Guests include a horny vampire teenager (who’s actually 46 – they don’t physically age) who’s been living “clean” by nursing the blood of his parents, a Welsh party girl who died in a drunk driving accident and now exists as a decaying zombie, and a dorky vampire fanboy of Mitchell. Also living in town are a “respectable” middle class vampire couple that indulges their blood hunger by finding willing S&M slaves on Craigslist; a father and son werewolf team that have become crusading vampire-killers; and, touchingly, George’s father, who may well be a ghost, but whose main problem is learning how to express passion for his wife.

Before long (and not a moment too soon) the former head vampire Herrick is resurrected. (Apparently you really do have to stake them through the heart; simply having a werewolf rip out their throats isn’t enough.) Played magnificently by Jason Watkins, Herrick comes to the house dry of blood and in a state of dementia. The housemates allow him to live as the crazy uncle in the attic just to keep from drawing attention to their monster clan. But as he slowly begins to recover his faculties and his bloodlust returns, his restoration to scene-chewing evil is truly terrifying to behold.

Meanwhile, even a budding romantic relationship with Annie and friendship with George and (the now wolf-pregnant) Nina, can’t bring Mitchell to own up to the truth about committing mass murder back in Bristol. He’s a mess and a liar, and his continued descent threatens everyone around him. The program portrays with eerie accuracy the family chaos caused by an addict cut off from treatment and support. Eventually, their cozy supernatural family set-up is destroyed by his duplicity.

I closed my review of series one of Being Human series one with a reflection on the idea of human frailty as “shadow” versus “sin.” What the show captures in these latter two seasons are the “monsters” that so often get pushed to the edges of human community: the diseased and the dying, sex “perverts,” addicts, social misfits, the homeless, acne-afflicted teenagers whose horniness seems to work in inverse proportion to their attractiveness, the mentally ill; and even those who society allows to become monstrous to keep these other monsters at bay—like police, soldiers, and coroners. (A guy in my dorm in college was training to be a coroner; they’re not like you and me, these people.)

Bringing large and intractable social problems down to size in a domestic setting is the purpose of both classic melodrama and its modern equivalent, the situation comedy. Being Human straddles both genres, most successfully in the third season. But this domestic focus continues to be what separates the show from other vampire fare in television and movies. Like True Blood or even (cough) Twilight, Being Human unleashes the nightmares of the human shadow in metaphorical monster form. But here, it all happens within a house, behind closed doors, with a voyeuristic world peeping through the windows. Let’s hope the next season continues to keep the drama “all in the family.”

How can one who has not yet become human become God? –Irenaeus of Lyon

Joining the nearly endless procession of vampire/supernatural thrillers these days is a BBC production, Being Human, about a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf that live together as housemates in Bristol, England. (As you do.) The first season or “series,” as they say, is out in America on DVD this summer, and Series 2 is currently being shown on BBC America.

The show has a smaller budget and range than the Alan Ball HBO vampire extravaganza True Blood, which ultimately makes it more fun and less daunting to get into. (None of this, “I am the Queen of Mississippi…” “But I am the King of Alabama…” “But we must respect the Vampire Authority!”). In the British series, the vampires have been infesting the port town of Bristol for a few hundred years, but keeping a low profile. Mitchell (Aidan Turner) a handsome Irish vampire “recruited” during World War I, used to be their hero but now has decided to go cold turkey on the blood feeding and re-integrate himself into humanity–hence the housemates.  George, played by History Boy Russell Tovey, is a nebbishy Jewish/British sort of werewolf, who is dreadfully ashamed of the condition that causes him to sprout hair on his palms when it’s “that time of month.”  Annie (Lenora Crichlow) is the ghost that hangs out in, or haunts, the house–because she died there.

Werewolf George (Russell Tovey), vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner) and ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow).

The story arc features less of the elaborate but careful plotting of recent sci-fi/fantasy shows like the aforementioned True Blood, or Battlestar Galactica, or Lost. The vampires in Being Human have big plans for world domination, but seem not to have advanced much beyond a small fraternal order with their own clubhouse in a defunct funeral parlor.  Several of the longer story threads build great tension without much of a payoff. One particularly unsatisfying confrontation between vampire and werewolf in the last episode results in a badly-drawn supernatural standoff with unarmed opponents. Could no one have thought to bring a wooden stake or a silver bullet?

Other aspects of the low budget turn out in the show’s favor.  The special effects are kept to a minimum, with the producers choosing prosthetics and puppetry over CGI, which actually works out as a refreshing homage to the low-rent history of the monster genre.  And because they don’t have as much to go on in the way of effects, the cast does what the Brits do best, which is act.  No one can chew scenery like British character actors, and the head vampire Herrick (Jason Watkins), his lackey Seth (Dylan Brown), and the hideously abusive Owen (Greg Chillin) stand out as some richly performed bad guys. The main characters are an earnest and likable group of young people. (They made a well-received appearance at Comic-Con this July.)

The show works best when the parallels between the monster world and the real world become explicit–the title, “Being Human,” says what it’s really about.  Mitchell’s bloodlust is a metaphor for addiction, as he struggles against a desperate bodily need, and sometimes falls off the wagon with destructive results.  George’s inner wolf is a grand foil to his outer orderly exterior.  (As Mitchell says, “I can never tell if you have Jewish shame or werewolf shame.”)  Perhaps the most poignant condition is expressed in the ghostly Annie as she embodies (or disembodies) the diminution of a soul crushed by spousal abuse.  Society gets its comeuppance in one episode where the townspeople turn on the roommates not because they are monsters, but because of a spurious accusation of child molestation.  And two of the characters have romantic relationships complicated as much by their fears of intimacy as their supernatural conditions.

There is a brief religious subplot when a hospital chaplain is called to check in on the wounded Mitchell.  Rev. Mark (Michael Begley) offers to pray for him, and George says, “I don’t think that’d be a good idea.  I’m Jewish, and he’s, well, complicated.”  (The vicar responds, “Jewish people pray, I’ve seen Yentl.”)  Rev. Mark gets used as a kind of human garlic bulb when the vampires try to come for Mitchell and George.  I’ll say this for the vampires, they’re good, ecumenical vampires who are as offended by George’s Star of David necklace as they would be by a cross.  Rev. Mark later gives George some advice from I Corinthians 13:11:  “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child:  but when I became a man, I put away childish things,” which becomes important for George’s development as a character.

The show is not so much religious as mytho-poetic.  The monstrous conditions of these very human characters represent what Carl Jung would call the “shadow,” that part of the personality that a person finds the most terrifying or shameful part of one’s self.  Ultimately, the shadow must be embraced and accepted, without being allowed to dominate or destroy, in order for us to become integrated human beings.  When I became a man and thought like a man, I found this explanation of human darkness more convincing than the orthodox Christian explanation of Original Sin.  The idea that we project all of our human darkness onto the sacrificial Christ rather than facing it and integrating it; the idea that we must grovel for forgiveness for what is an evolutionary component of our being; the idea that our culmination as persons would be dying and excising this necessary part of our human experience like a malignant tumor; started to strike me as, well, childish.  As George says to Annie when she confesses that she wants to get revenge on the man who killed her, “It’s human. Not everything about being human is nice.”  I’ve come to accept that about myself and come to believe in a God who wants me to embrace the totality of what I am–monsters and all.

This summer will mark the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and by then, David Simon‘s newest series, Treme will have come to  close.  Its twenty episodes will serve as a fitting reminder of the devastation that that storm, and the ensuing floods, wrought on countless lives, a devastation that continues to plague many lives even today.  Perhaps the series will return the tragedy to our public consciousness and remind us of the vulnerability of the poor and marginalized in our own communities…for those of us lucky enough to actually watch it that is.

Treme takes place in the titular New Orleans neighborhood, one steeped in musical history and heritage.  It begins three months after Katrina and follows a host of characters who have either returned or never left, who struggle to re-build homes, lives, and relationships.  The main characters include a struggling trombone player, Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce), who struggles to find the next music gig, and his ex-wife Ladonna (Khandi Alexander), who desperately searches for a lost brother who may or may not have been in the custody of the state when Katrina hit.  She is represented by Toni Bernette (Melissa Leo), a lawyer who seems to take on every down-trodden New Orleanian’s case.  Toni is married to Creighton (John Goodman), an English professor at Tulane University, who, rather than working on his next novel, discovers YouTube and records a series of political rants against the federal, state, and local governments.  Big Chief Albert Lambreaux (Clarke Peters) is a contractor whose children do not equally share his love of New Orleans and its traditions.  Janette Desautel (Kim Dickens) is an accomplished chef who, due to the effects of Katrina on her home and business, struggles to keep her restaurant up and running.  She is a friend-with-benefits with Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn), and aspiring musician/politician who is passionate about New Orleans and his neighborhood but cannot seem to find a way to channel that passion into something truly productive.  Despite these numerous stories being played out in each episode, the series never feels to crowded and Simon and his team manage to give every story its due.

Clark Peters as Big Chief Albert Lambreaux.

Once again, David Simon has managed to take a specific/particular time and place and unlock its universal appeal.  His stinging criticism of incompetent responses to the storm is a vital reminder of governmental corruption that hurts the least of these the most.  At the same time, Treme never ceases to be compelling drama.  From the opening scene, we are thrust into a world with its own language, customs, tradition, and music.  Yet any foreignness is quickly eradicated by familiarity with the characters’ experiences of corruption, grief, loss, and anger.  Serial television is one of the more effective venues that Katrina demands for creative and prophetic reflection. In my review of A.D. last year, I pointed out that the graphic novel form allowed us to linger over images that newscasts often sped through.  The same could be said of a television series, although it does…or can do…much more.  Here, Simon and his writers reveal levels of complexity that we could never imagine without having endured the tragedy or knowing those who did.  Treme has a convincing documentary feel to it, even as some of the images on the screen seem simply too horrific or insane to be true.  Perhaps the strongest point of the series, and of the region itself, is the juxtaposition of grief and celebration symbolized perfectly by the way in which Antoine moves from playing in a celebratory parade to a funeral in the span of the first episode.  In each case, he tells his fellow players, “Play for that money boys!”

Kim Dickens as chef Janette Desautel.

My only problem with Treme, like The Wire, is less a problem with the series themselves than the state of television in general.  I’m not (re)inventing the wheel in my comments here, but it’s frustrating that Treme can’t air on network or cable channels.  Of course, it really has no place there given its requisite graphic content, but its HBO home severely limits the number of people who can and should see it.  As such, it contributes to a hierarchical viewership that is directly antithetical to Simon’s more populist leanings.  Moreover, HBO’s unwillingness to stream episodes or sell them via iTunes, for example, only exacerbates the problem.  On the other hand, the series’ website is phenomenal, providing information about the local musicians featured each week and links to download the music from each episode.  I don’t have HBO and have been forced to undertake more nefarious measures to watch it.  Somehow, in a show where most of the characters hustle to get by, perhaps this is appropriate after all.

Treme airs on HBO on Sunday nights at 10 and includes coarse language and disturbing content.

Forget Lost, AMC’s Breaking Bad is currently the best television series going right now…by a mile.  In fact, the first 5-10 minutes of the season three opener is better than the entire final season of Lost thus far.  After the jump, I’ll give a very brief synopsis of the first two seasons and the first episode of season three as well as a couple of reasons why the series is just so damn good.

In Breaking Bad, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemist, forgoes a lucrative career in the private sector to teach high school chemistry in Albequerque, New Mexico.  He is married to Skylar (Anna Gunn) and they have a teenage son, Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), and a daughter on the way.  In the first episode, Walter learns that he has lung cancer and an extremely slim chance of survival.  To provide for his family’s financial future, he begins to cook crystal meth along with a former student, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul).  Given his knowledge of chemistry, he cooks the best meth in the business.  Word of the quality of their product soon spreads and the cash, as well as the potential danger, soon pours in.  Walter must navigate not only the relationship with his wife and son, but his DEA agent brother-in-law, Hank (Dean Norris), as well.  His successful business also impinges on the the territory of other drug dealers as well, namely Tuco (Raymond Cruz), with whom a conflict dominates season 2.  Also during the second season, Jesse falls in love with Jane Margolis (Krysten Ritter), but both of them fall prey to his own product.  When Walter visits Jesse’s house late one night to retrieve some money, he sees the two of them passed out in bed where Jane begins to choke on her own vomit and dies.  This sends Jesse and Jane’s father, Donald (John de Lancie), into limitless depths of despair.  Donald, an air traffic controller, returns to work but his mind stays on his deceased daughter, and, as a result, he allows two planes to crash into each other over Albequerque, resulting in just under 200 deaths.  The season three opener finds Jesse in re-hab and Walter trying to rationalize the tragedy that he himself could have prevented.  To make matters worse, two Mexican hit men are on the hunt for Walter.  Oh…and the cancer?  It looks like the treatment has bought Walt some time.

Bryan Cranston as Walter White.

Breaking Bad succeeds, and is so effective, because it does not resort to any fantasy gimmicks.  There are really no “what ifs” here as the series is grounded so solidly in the real world.  Cranston is an everyman, forced to make a tough decision that any of us could face in a split second.  One of the series’ greatest strengths is its cast, all of whom are both terrific actors who look like they could be our next door neighbors, not famous television or movie stars.  The creator of Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan, doesn’t need an imaginary island to play out stories of sin, destruction, and redemption.  He is well aware that the real world of drug dealing and addiction provides plenty of that.  Jesse’s sense of “lostness” and remorse over his loss of Jane is more powerful than almost anything Lost has served up in six seasons.  There’s absolutely no doubt that Gilligan and his crew know where Breaking Bad is going and how they’re going to get us there.  Oh, and that series three opener?  One of the best episodes in recent television history.  It begins with almost 10 minutes of dialogue-less action.  Mexican peasants crawl on their hands and knees to a shrine in the middle of the desert.  Two well-dressed men pull up next to the peasants in a Mercedes, get out, and begin crawling as well.  When they arrive, they place a hand-drawn picture of Walt on the shrine and begin to violently make their way into New Mexico.  Skylar finally confronts Walt to let him know that she knows about his secret identity and to serve up some divorce papers, all without giving him a chance to explain himself.  This opener sets up a perfect storm for Walt that will rage throughout the season.  If there’s any series worth catching up on it’s certainly Breaking Bad.

Breaking Bad airs on Sunday nights at 10 on AMC.

Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens.

In one of the concluding lines to the first episode of the new FX series, Justified, Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), an on-the-ropes Deputy U.S. Marshal, sneaks in to his ex-wife’s house for a late-night chat.  In the course of their conversation, she tells him, “Raylan, you might just be the angriest man I’ve ever known.”  The line works so well because he tries so hard to hide this anger.Raylan has been re-located to his home state of Kentucky after questionably killing a drug/gun runner.  We know, even if his superiors don’t, that Raylan provoked him to draw his weapon in order to “justify”shooting him.  Upon returning to Kentucky, he is put on the case of a white supremacist and his cronies who terrorize the state.  Coincidentally, Raylan and Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) were once friends.  In the final showdown at the end of the first episode, Raylan sits across a table from Boyd, just as he did with the gun runner.  Yet when Raylan fires, he just misses a kill shot, allowing Boyd to live and creating what will most likely be a season-long feud between the two.

Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder.

After Deadwood‘s all to short run and with the conclusion of the first episode of Justified, I have arrived at a successful television equation:  Timothy Olyphant + cowboy hat = damn good series.  In fact, the similarities between Olyphant’s characters in Deadwood and Justified extend beyond the cowboy hat.  Both characters repressed an almost consuming rage.  Both characters have their quick-witted nemesis, although I doubt Goggin’s Boyd will ever match up to the effectiveness of Ian McShane‘s Swearengen (of course HBO’s ability to run rampant with foul language has a lot to do with that).

There are, of course, some stereotypical elements to Justified, particularly its emphasis on religious fundamentalism and its relationship to white supremacy in the South.  Yet, the casting for these devils works fine…thus far.  It will be interesting to see just how long the creators run with this particular story line or if new cases will emerge.  Moreover, it will be worth tuning in or DVR’ing to see just why Raylan is so angry and if he will find any peace and solace through his return home.

Justified airs Tuesday nights on FX at 10 pm.  Check for replays of episodes one and two throughout the week.

Check out the latest from Jason Derr on Being Erica after the jump.

BEST SHOW YOU ARE NOT WATCHING

I will begin my article with an apology to my American friends and readers.  As one of you – an American living in Canada – I am aware how much better international media is than our own.  How many of us grew up watching anything BBC we could get our hands on?  To the list of amazing international media we must add the CBC – the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  I apologize for referencing a show you are not watching, but one you hopefully can in the future.

Starting last year and continuing now into its second season, the CBC’s Being Erica follows Erica, a 32 year old with a Masters Degree, who in the first episode is fired from her call center job, stood up by her new boyfriend, and rushed to the hospital after an allergic reaction.  This is where she meets Dr. Tom.  As a therapist, Dr. Tom is a bit unorthodox.  His therapy centers on asking Erica to identify her regrets in life and then, through means unexplained, sends Erica to that moment in time where she can examine the choices she made, why she made them, and what impact they have had on the person she has become.

Dr. Tom is sort of a Canadian Doctor Who.  Instead of a TARDIS – a phone box that is larger on the inside than on the outside and which travels through space and time – he has an office that can magically be on the other side of any door Erica walks through during her day.  Instead of fighting rogue Time Lords, Monsters, or Alien Threats, Dr. Tom helps Erica fight poor life choices.  In many ways Erica has missed the mark in her life.  A young woman full of potential, passion, and education, she has consistently settled for less in life.  Haunted by the tragic death of her beloved brother, Erica lives her life off center from the person she knows she should and could be.

SIN AND GRACE

In this, I see a mine of deep theological reflection.  In Being Erica, it could be said that past trauma – or in our religious language, past sin – becomes the place of present grace. Unlike the horror movie idea of sin so prevalent in much of Christian culture – where sin is the large stain on our soul that haunts us and causes much crisis – sin returns to its origin of missing the mark.  To miss the mark is not to be beyond God’s grace or to be beyond redemption.  To miss the mark means to be off a bit. In our current exploration it means that the past moment of being off the mark – broken relationships, trauma, pain, unhealthy – is the space by which God enters our lives as present grace.  In this way, we can see that all lives are God-soaked lives and that sin is not a tragedy of salvic importance but are moments of Grace where the spirit of the newness of life is encountered.

Let’s take a moment to look at Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, notably his use of the idea of the Great Chain Of Being.  Here, the universe is seen as comprising holons – wholes that are also parts.  For example, atoms are complete unto themselves.  When two of them join together you have a molecule, also a whole unto itself.  More molecules make an organism.  More complex organisms also have a mind.  Atoms to molecules to mind.  Society moves from individuals to families to towns to villages to cities to nations, each piece of that is a part that is a whole.  Beyond that, we could add post-national organizational ability with the advent of the Internet.  Each level of evolution transcends and includes the previous level.  Mind includes body (organism), includes molecules includes atoms.  Evolution and transcendence are not escapes from bodily or evolutionary realities, but movements into more complex relationships with them.

In this way, it should be noted, if you destroy any level of evolution, you destroy every higher level.  If you destroy at the level of organism – embodied realities – then you destroy that body and that mind.  Lower levels remain.  If you destroy at the molecular level you take with it the higher levels of molecule, organism and mind, leaving only atoms.  The phrase for this action of the ‘great chain of being’ and its levels of evolution is “Include and Transcend”.

But let us return to sin.  Sin is not, as we have said, the horror movie monster that stalks us, nor is it the great blemish on our soul.  If we were to destroy sin, we would destroy everything that comes after it: the life lived, lessons learned, and repentance made.  It is as much a part of our development and us as cognitive thinking and artistic expression are.  If sin is an evolutionary development on the journey of being ‘inspirited’ in life and a movement towards the experience of Grace, then it is not something we can do away with or villainize.  Those theologies that seek to trivialize sin by “epic-sizing” it miss the point.

The question for those of us of Christian faith now becomes what do we do with the biblical verses where God promises to forget our sin?  If all higher levels are dependent on lower levels – or we cannot have our present without our past – then to destroy sin, as we said, destroys all that comes after it.  In this way, I will suggest that we understand these verses as being an indication that God does not forget our sins but instead re/members them.

To re/member as the name suggests is to ‘member again’.  This does not remove sin from our existence but ‘includes and transcends it’.  A view of God as re/membering our sin recognizes that past sin is not something we can escape but is something we must accept and include in our present reality if we are to learn about our own lives and our lives with God.  If our past sin is wiped out from memory – ours or Gods – then the ability to learn from those experiences and grow from them – re/member them – and thus experience the Grace of God in the present becomes moot and impossible.  By re/membering our sin God is able to accept the forgiven past, and by the power of his/her call invites us to experience the grace that flows from past sin in the form of self-knowledge, growth, and deepening relationship with God, humanity, the earth, and ourselves.

A view of salvation in this model is not that we have the ability to have our sin wiped out but that we have the ability to have our sin re/membered by God.  In contrast to a judgment model, this knowledge model allows God’s knowledge of us not to be a damning thing but a freeing thing. God allows us to re/member our lives in such a manner that freedom can be found in the present tense reality.  When God re/members us and our sin – and when we re/member ourselves and our relationship with God – we are able to engage in a work of inclusion that allows our experience of grace-in-sin to speak deeply to our present lives.  This deep speaking/listening contains in it the call of God, which moves us from a place of alienation to a place of holistic integration.  Sin is not a foreign element in our life but the seat of God and God’s grace.

SIN

The discerning reader will recognize that I am referring to sin as concrete objects instead of as the default state of being of humanity.  With Luther, I operate from a place that assumes the goodness of humanity.  As Luther said, Christ would not have become incarnate in humanity if there were not something in humanity worth experiencing (paraphrase mine).  As opposed to Original Sin then, I refer to a view of humanity that could take a nod from Mathew Fox’s idea of Original Blessing.

Beyond this, most of us do not relate to sin as the natural state of being off the mark.  We instead refer to those moments of broken relationship that create forms of alienation between ourselves, God, Earth, neighbor and life.  The state of broken relationship is always experienced in the concrete – the addicts falling off the wagon, the adulterer’s affair, and the concrete act of greed by the greedy.  It is to these moments that I seek to address.  If we can view these concrete moments of sin as being re/membered into our human experience, then they become less tragic and more joyful locations in life.  From them we can recognize the encounter of God and the flow of Grace that wells up into the present life.  No matter how many times an addict falls of the wagon, it is known only to God how many times he has resisted such things (and I would suggest the victories of grace outweigh the moments of brokenness).

BEING YOURSELF

Like Erica, we experience growth in the present only when we re-encounter our past and re/member the experience into our being.  To be in denial of who and what we were does not allow growth into what we may then become.  Just as Erica must re-encounter her experiences of her late brother – and come to terms with his failings and shortcomings – we must allow ourselves to be re/membered by God and by ourselves if we are to come into a right relationship that allows growth and self-discovery.

Erica’s journey of re/membering is much like our own.  At each level of self -discovery she is faced with the challenge of how to reincorporate those past moments of being off the mark in such a manner that allows her to grow in the present.  Her journey is towards being her self.  God does not judge us if we fail to be like Moses or Jesus, but rather if we fail to be ourselves and the creation and person we are capable of being.  As the great theological TV series Joan of Arcadia said, God wants us to fulfill our true nature.

Again, it is unfortunate that Being Erica is not available on any American network or cable channels.  Of course, you can always search for it on iTunes or streaming on the internet.

Check out the latest from Jason Derr after the jump, an attempt to look at the theological concepts in the ABC TV series, FlashForward.  The article is written in consideration of the first six episodes and not of the series as a whole.

“On October 6th the whole world blacked out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. The whole world saw the future.”   — Opening lines of FlashForward

INTRODUCTION

In ABC’s FlashForward, humanity is impacted by a glimpse of the future (six months away) that they received during a worldwide blackout. This future-haunted humanity now must contend with the vision of the future they were given, be it the end of a marriage, falling off the wagon, or the possibility of their own death. In several cases, these visions of the future set people on a journey that makes the future come true. Complications arise when, in a romantic partnership, one partner sees nothing–indicating death–and the other partner received a clear vision of their wedding. In one case an FBI agent, future-haunted by the vision he received, learned he was responsible for a young woman’s death, chooses suicide as a way of altering the future, and proving that it is indeed alterable.

Many people, this author included, who grew up in the evangelical Christian subculture, are no strangers to the phrase that “God is in Control.”  For many that meant that God could violate the laws of physics, bless or curse nations with violence or prosperity, or make planes fly into or not fly into tall, New York buildings.

For John Caputo, that Derrida-inspired theologian and philosopher, to say God is in control of the future means a much different thing.  For Caputo, God is in control of the future, even the future that is not controllable.  We live in the couch of the future we plan and are encountered by the future that is beyond our control, the future that we find ourselves in, despite ourselves.  Even if we arrive in the future we plan and work for, it contains in it, or can dive toward, realities beyond our prediction.

In this way, God is in control not by blessing us with jobs or careers or through some form of pre-destination but by, instead, being the God of the Lord’s Prayer.  What this means is that God is the God who gives “our daily bread”  God is the God of life and the gifts of life.  Humanity is blessed with all the gifts that today brings–the bread that is for today.  Tomorrow will have other breads and other gifts.

But that future, not the one we dream of but the one we must actually contend with, is the future where God is. This is the future God is in control of, not in the sense that God pre-ordained these things or can or will alter them in or against our favor, but that instead God leads us into an area beyond our control and is present in that future.  In this sense, we too, like the citizens of FlashForward, are future-haunted by realities beyond our control, which contain promise as well as the un-predictable.

FUTURE-HAUNTED

In Caputo’s words, echoing Derrida, this God is in charge of the “impossible possibility” that is the future. This future unhinges us, like lovers, and opens us to spaces of infinite longing, as the theopoets would put it.  To be future-haunted is to be a co-creator with God, recognizing that the architecture of the future-of the world as it will and may become–is called out of the building material of our present lives and the path we have traveled to arrive in the present.

Again, we arrive at the prophetic in the Lord’s Prayer.  We end with “thy Kingdom come” an admission that the world that is arriving in the future–the one that is coming but never fully arrives–is a future beyond our capacity to control.  This is the Kingdom of God (called herein the Work of God) that is always coming but never arrives.

This “To-Come” of the Work of God is the future-haunted life that humanity lives with.  If we take seriously Immanuel–God With Us–then we must take seriously the idea that this God calls us forth into uncertainty. In this way humanity on this side of the television screen is future-haunted as well.  But the future we are haunted by is also a future we are grieved by.

Much of life is trapped in the future we grieve for.  This is the future of the best-laid plans of mice and men that we toil for but never comes to complete fruition.  Even for those of us who find ourselves at rest in a future much like the one we anticipated, we grieve because it will never truly satisfy us the way we would like.  We build our house in the future, but we can never truly unpack the furniture.

To live in the future, recognizing that the present is a form of the future realized, is to encounter God not as an all-powerful being but as a co-creator, to recognize that we ourselves are the “body of Christ” or presence of God made manifest in the human condition.  When we grieve the off-putting of the Work of God fully come, we are in fact grieving the failure of humanity to meet God in the future and to recognize God’s face as humanity come alive in the Work of God.

ORTHOPARADOXOLOGY

Here we arrive at paradox. In FlashForward the future-haunted are confronted with sometimes conflicting visions of the future or with present realities that render certain futures moot.  Likewise our future plans and the future that God meets us in are often times at odds.  The paradox is that we meet an all powerful God in the future to only discover that humanity is the called-out being which is the body of God, the Work of God made flesh.  The all-powerful nature of God is humanity fully engaged to do the Work of God

This leads us into the realm of paradoxology. Theologically, paradoxology is the idea that conflicting theologies, creeds, doctrinal statements, religious views–no matter how strongly held by individual players–lead us closer to the truth because they conflict.  The God of the future then is one who lives in paradox. The future we plan and the one life delivers–the one God lives in–stand at odds with each other, and thus, it is the space God occupies because they conflict, drawing the human life caught in the tide of paradox to articulate her or his journey at that moment.

Instead of taking us out of the theology of the creeds, paradoxically, paradoxology takes us into the faith of the creeds.  If we can see the creeds as maintaining the tension of early Christian debate (fully human and fully God, God is three and God is one, among other conflicts) then we can recognize that faith in the tensions has always been what the Christian church has done.

The challenge for humanity, and not just the Church, which must recognize itself as the Body of God that does the Work of God, is to recognize that this body by rights must and will contain paradoxes.  Just as a triune conception of God creates a paradox as God (God who is father must be of different relationship than a God who is the son and both of these must be of a different relationship from the she of God that is the Spirit), so must the body of God in the world be of paradox. It is not correct doctrine that saves, nor is it humanity’s right relationship with God that saves.  It is instead God’s relationship with us, articulated in paradox, which saves.  Humanity can see itself, as the body of God, connected by the she of God, that Holy Spirit.  And if this is the case, the Holy Spirit is less a force that drives out false doctrine and fills in with right knowledge, but is instead a network or an internet uniting multitudes of voices, and equipping them in the midst of their paradoxes to do the Work of God.

Paradoxology is the ability to have and live with doctrine and ideas that are in conflict and recognize that in all of it, or the tensions between, God is revealed and we are revealed as the body of God in the world. Paradoxology can help us navigate conflicting Christian doctrine as well as recognize the presence of God in conflicting religious views outside of our tradition.  None of us have it right and in the paradox we learn that all of us have it right.

While the reader may think that we have diverged from the issue of FlashForward and the future, I promise you this is not true. The future is like the kingdom of God in that it is always coming but never arrives.  When the future does arrive, it has transformed into something else, namely the present. But the future is also where God arrives and where God’s work lives.  The call of God keeps calling us into God’s future, and we arrive only to find that the future God has promised, hinted at, and called us to only exists in the very paradoxes of that future.

FUTURE-HAUNTED, PARADOXOLOGY AND THE PROPHETIC

From here let us build on the two streams we have built so far: the future haunted and paradoxology. To follow these streams we come to what is often called the prophetic. For those who grew up in evangelical church circles, the prophetic can mean a road map to the end of the world, a future history yet to be realized, or an absolute truth spoken in church during worship.  Instead, we will follow the route of Hebrew bible scholar/theopoet Walter Bruggeman who views the prophetic as a poetry we speak into the present, an imagining we tell the present world about what the future may look like without repentance.  The future named in prophecy is a future birthed in paradox:  it is the future that may happen, it is the future God tries to prevent from happening, and it is the future in which God will meet us.

These paradoxical futures, like the ones encountered in the worldwide blackout of FlashForward, present us with a problem.  To believe in a future that comes to us in prophecy is to believe in a future that cannot be, should not be, and may or may not be. In this we mean that when the author of John’s Revelation saw giant bugs, the number 666, and many headed beasts, he was not giving a literal reading of what the future will contain.  As residents of the future (from his perspective) we have not seen these giant bugs, many headed beasts, or the number 666 tattooed on the body of the vast population of humanity.

John is working in a poetic of the future that will never be but that, in fact, may be.  By presenting us a paradox or theopoetic we are asked to engage in deep imagining of the lives we live.  God comes to us in the future, but also in the paradox of the future.  The poetic that John’s revelation–and all prophecy–presents to us is the possibility of grief in present time for the future.  Confronted with a vision of a future with God, justice, human rights, etc., the present world can grieve but can also prepare to meet God in that future.  As we grieve and prepare to meet God we are able to undo the future–build toward the future God lives in–in order to make the “To-Come” of God’s work come true.  Yet God’s work is always coming but never arrives.  We work to prevent a grievable future and, in doing so, find ourselves in the future with God, never satisfied, grieving, and called onward to continue the work.

“I Found A Way To Change The Game” – THE WORK OF GOD

Episode Six ends with Al, an FBI agent future-haunted by a vision in which he learns that a young woman he wounded has been taken off of life support, leaping from the roof of the FBI headquarters in Los Angeles. By leaping from this building Al engages the paradox:  if he is dead, then that future cannot come to pass, and if he dies, he can prove to all those who are future-haunted that we are not victims of the future but rather its co-creators.

For those of us who live in the world on this side of the television, such escapes from the future are not as easily engaged or as clearly labeled as being the “right thing to do.”  Most of us must live with the paradox of the future and of our present realities.  Like the cast of FlashForward, we are a future haunted people. But for us, we will meet God in the future, and realize that the out of control world of the future is the future that is God’s home.

In this way, we are engaging with the prophetic and the Work of God.  The cast of FlashForward wants to fight the future. Instead, what we must do is welcome it and live with the God who is present in it. The prophetic task is to name the paradox of the future as God’s home and to call the Body of God into engagement in the present-tense world in which we live.

Like Al, we must change the game, not by escaping the future, but by living into it.  We welcome it as the home of God, and, in the paradox of an imperfect future which contains God, we begin to live out our holy work as the Body of God.  The work of God is to be prophetic in our paradoxy.